TRIP TO POLAND, MAY 2015 THE PROGRAM OF THE TOUR

Transcription

1 TRIP TO POLAND, MAY 2015 THE PROGRAM OF THE TOUR Foto: Ewa Held Day 1: Warsaw Arrival in Warsaw - transfer to the hotel Depending on the arrival time - short afternoon tour of historic Warsaw If arrival on Wednesday-start of the tour on Thursday morning- tour of historic Warsaw and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews Accommodation in Warsaw - to be confirmed Dinner at the hotel or city restaurant Theatre performance or Concert?

2 Foto: Renata Zawadzka-Ben Dor Day 2: Warsaw After breakfast - full day tour: The Warsaw Ghetto (the former area of the Warsaw ghetto - remains of the ghetto walls, synagogue, monuments and historical sites including the Monument to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Remembrance Path, Mila 18 Monument and Umschlagplatz Monument, Jewish cemetery, Optional Jewish Historical Institute (exhibition and film), Optional the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (note one optional admission possible according to your choice, the second one can be scheduled on the first day depending on the arrival time) During the day free time for lunch Accommodation in Warsaw to be confirmed Shabbat Dinner

3 Treblinka Concentration Camp sign by David Shankbone CC BY-SA 3.0 szylt znajduje sie w Yed Vashem Day 3: Tykocin - Lopuchowo - Treblinka After breakfast departure for full day tour by bus: Tykocin: once an important trade centre owned by Polish kings, by 1800 became a typical Jewish shtetl. Before WW2, the town had 5,000 inhabitants, half of them Jewish. All of the 2,500 Jewish residents of Tykocin were taken to the nearby Lopuchowo forest and shot by the Nazis in the Summer of Today Tykocin looks the same as it did before WW2 you can still see Jewish wooden houses, one of the finest synagogues in Poland built in 1642 (now museum) and admire the perfect harmony of both Christian and Jewish architecture. Visit to the Tykocin synagogue Lopuchowo: mass graves and memorial in the forest commemorating the extermination site of Tykocin Jews Treblinka Memorial: Treblinka, established in 1941 as a forced labor camp for Poles is located 110 km (68 miles) northeast of Warsaw. Within a year a second camp was built which became a symbol of the extermination of the central European Jews. Opened on July 23, 1942, as the Warsaw ghetto deportation began it resulted in total 900 thousand victims. Handled with the utmost of secrecy, surrounded by two barbed wire fences was a scene of organized revolt of Jewish prisoners in August 1943, after which was liquidated in October Today a symbolic memorial monument and 17 thousand stones mark the site of Jewish tragedy Lunch en-route, evening return to Warsaw. Accommodation in Warsaw to be confirmed 380 km

4 Day 4: Warsaw Wlodawa Sobibor - Lublin After breakfast - departure by bus to: Foto: Wikipedia Włodawa: a town in eastern Poland on the Bug River, close to the borders with Belarus and Ukraine. Once a Jewish shtetl which had a representative in the Council of the Four Lands (central body of Jewish authority in Poland from 1580 to 1764). Włodawa was over 70% Jewish before World War II and the Holocaust. Situated next to the Sobibor extermination camp, Włodawa Jews were mostly rounded up and deported there, or killed locally in any one of the German arbeitslagers (workcamps). Visit to the Włodawa Synagogue (Wlodowa Synagogue) - an architectural complex consisting of 2 historic synagogues and a Jewish administrative building, now preserved as a museum. The complex includes the Włodawa Great Synagogue of , the late 18th century Small Synagogue, and the 1928 community building. It is "one of the best-preserved" synagogues in Poland Sobibor Memorial - a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the village of Sobibór. Jews from Poland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union were transported to Sobibór by rail and suffocated in gas chambers fed by the exhaust of large petrol engines. One source states that up to 200,000 people were murdered at Sobibór. Lublin check in and dinner 330 km

5 Day 5: Lublin After breakfast - tour of Jewish Lublin: the former pre-war Jewish part of Lublin and Lublin ghetto area: visit to the new Jewish cemetery, Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva (the famous modern Talmudic academy opened on June 24 and 25, 1930), if time allows the Old Jewish cemetery. Brama Grodzka Center. Follow with Lublin German district to see Action Reinhardt High Command buildings where the Final solution plan was supervised by Odilo Globocnik, the commander of SS and Gestapo Police of the Lublin District During the day free time for lunch Accommodation in Lublin - to be confirmed Dinner at the hotel or city restaurant

6 Obóz na Majdanku 05 kjkcc-by-sa-3.0-pl Day 6: Lublin - Trawniki - Izbica - Zamosc After breakfast departure to Zamosc. On the way: guided tour of Majdanek Museum - a former concentration and forced labour camp, also used as a death camp. It was located in a suburb just three miles from Lublin, opened in September 1941, initially for Soviet POWs, and was liberated by the Soviet Army in July During this time more than 79,000 people were murdered at Majdanek main camp alone (59,000 of them Polish Jews) and between 95,000 and 130,000 people in the entire Majdanek system of subcamps. Some 18,000 Jews were killed at Majdanek on November 3, 1943, during the largest single-day, single-camp massacre of the Holocaust, named Harvest Festival (totalling 43,000 with 2 subcamps) Trawniki - short stop in Trawniki to see the monument commemorating the former Trawniki concentration camp which provided slave labourers for nearby industrial plants of the SS Ostindustrie. From September 1941 until July 1944, the camp was also utilized for training guards recruited from Soviet POWs, known as "Hiwi" (German letterword for 'Hilfswillige', lit. "those willing to help"), for service with Auxiliary police in occupied Poland. The Trawniki men (German: Trawnikimänner) took part in Operation Reinhard, the Nazi extermination of Polish Jews. They conducted executions at extermination camps and in Jewish ghettos including at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka II, Warsaw, Czestochowa, Lublin, Lvov, Radom, Krakow, Bialystok, Majdanek as well as Auschwitz, not to mention Trawniki itself. Izbica - once a notable centre of trade and commerce, with time the town became a shtetl inhabited almost entirely by Polish Jews. During the WW2 the Izbica Ghetto was set up by the Nazis. The first mass deportation of ghetto inmates to the Bełżec extermination camp took place in mid-march 1942 conducted by the Reserve Police Battalion 101 with the aid of Ukrainian Trawnikis. During Operation Reinhard the ghetto served as a transfer point to the extermination camps in Belzec and Sobibor for foreign Jews deported from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and western Poland (Reichsgau Wartheland). Of all Jews of Izbica (over 90% of its prewar population), only 14 survived the Holocaust - one of them is Thomas "Toivi" Blatt, the Sobibor survivor. Zamosc - the UNESCO World Heritage site. Zamość is a unique example of a Renaissance town in Central Europe, consistently designed and built in accordance with the Italian theories of the "ideal town,"

7 built by the founder, Jan Zamoyski and the outstanding architect, Bernardo Morando. Zamość was a large center of Chasidic Judaism. The Oahal of Zamość was founded in 1588 when Jan Zamoyski agreed to settle the Jews in the city. The first Jewish settlers were mainly the Sephardi Jews coming from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Turkey. In the 17th century, the newcomers were recruited among the Ashkenazi Jews that soon constituted the majority of the Jewish population. Accommodation in Zamosc to be confirmed Lunch en route, dinner independent 120 km Day 7: Zamosc - Szczebrzeszyn - Sandomierz After breakfast: Old City of Zamosc Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictzwa Jewish and historic Zamosc city tour including visit to the synagogue in Zamosc. Szczebrzeszyn Szczebrzeszyn's history can be traced back to 1352 and there is one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Poland (16 th cent) visit to the Jewish cemetery. Name of Szczebrzeszyn is used in the most difficult sentence in Polish to be pronounced by foreigners W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie, which can be translated to: "In [the town of] Szczebrzeszyn a beetle sounds in the reed". The phrase has been incorporated in everyday language as an epitome of Polish tongue twisters, and is often presented by natives to foreign learners of Polish. A monument depicting a cricket playing the violin that was erected in Szczebrzeszyn refers to this sentence. Sandomierz beautiful miedieval town, known for its Old Town, which is a major tourist attraction. In the past, Sandomierz used to be one of the most important urban centers not only of Lesser Poland, but also of the whole country. Sandomierz also became a symbol of anti-jewish stereotypes in 2 catholic churches one can see a series of paintings with scenes with ritual murders committed in Sandomierz by Jews on Christian children. Visit to Sandomierz cathedral church and St Paul's Church to see them.

8 Accommodation in Sandomierz to be confirmed Lunch en route, dinner independent 140 km Foto: The Holocaust in Kazimierz Dolny 02CC0 Day 8: Sandomierz Poniatowa - Kazimierz Dolny Przytyk - Łódź After breakfast transfer to Łódź. On the way: Poniatowa - the memorial site of the former Nazi German concentration camp, later Jewish forced labour camp, where some 18 thousand Jews were executed during the Operation Harvest Festival (Aktion Erntefest) of November 4, The monument in memory of the victims of the Holocaust was unveiled in Poniatowa on November 4, 2008 Kazimierz Dolny a picturesque small town on Vistula river, a major tourist attraction of the region with magnificent old architecture. Jewish community was present in the city from the time of Casimir III the Great in the 14th century. The king granted the Jews a writ of rights which caused the town to become a focal point for Jewish immigration. Short walking tour around the town and the remnants of Jewish past the synagogue, the cemetery. One of the most famous Jewish residents of the town was the painter and sculptor Chaim Goldberg. Another was the noted journalist S. L. Shneiderman, who wrote about Kazimierz Dolny in his book The River Remembers. Przytyk (with no stop in the town) pass by the place where the Przytyk Pogrom occurred against the Jewish community on March 9, In the opinion of Jewish historian Emanuel Melzer of Tel Aviv University, it was the most notorious incident of antisemitic violence in Poland in the interwar period, and attracted worldwide attention, while other historians claim it was not a pogrom. Łódź check in, dinner Accommodation in Łódź to be confirmed Lunch en route, dinner

9 313 km Tora przed synagogą Reicherów w Łodzi, f. Mariusz Kucharczyk Day 9: Łódź After breakfast full day tour of Jewish Łódź (inc. the Łódź ghetto area, the Radegast deportation station, the cemetery) - itinerary to be confirmed. In the evening Jewish cuisine cooking workshop with tasting of self made traditional Jewish meals.

10 Foto: Day 10: Łódź Warsaw After breakfast transfer to Warsaw airport (depending on departure time some free time in Łódź or additional tour of historic Łódź possible to be confirmed) 130 km